SDCC - San Diego Comic Con

I just looked at my blog for the first time in a while and I really haven't posted too much between this years and last years Comic Con in San Diego. Hopefully, tomorrow or Wednesday, I will get out a post or 2 of this year's Con. It was an awesome Geeky time with friends, new friends and meeting people I admire.

I have a few hundred pics and a few videos to upload to my computer too.

I can say.. I am never staying out of town when attending Con (no matter how much cheaper it is) again. It's just too much fun walking around at 2am running into Matthew Lillard also walking back to the same hotel you're staying.

Spring Break RV Trip

It's been a busy month and I keep thinking about blogging but am only now writing one up.

First thing was our RV trip during Spring Break:

Starting on 3/28, Erik and I took a weeks vacation with my parents in my Aunts RV to visit Family up in Northern CA and Nevada. It was a great trip and boy was it pretty up there. I finally got to see the Ranch in Bishop.

We started on Sunday driving up to my parent's house to hitch a ride in their minivan to the Ranch to pick up the RV. We stayed the night at Tanya's and it was fun having dinner with them and the kids. The next day we headed out in the RV and boy were we nervous about it. None of us had driven an RV before.

We wanted to stop at my Uncles in Nevada on the way to my Mom my's Sister's place, but we had to beat a storm over the mountain, so we planned on hitting them up on the way back. It was great to see my Aunt, who I hadn't seen since Thanksgiving 1998, and my Grandpa, who I hadn't seen since my wedding. My Mom's Dad is only 3 days younger than my Dad's Dad. It was nice to be able to have a conversation with a grandpa who remembers me and share laughs over the same stories. I miss my Dad's Dad who has bad dementia and doesn't remember me at times when I see him. My Mom's Sister isn't doing to well health wise either. She's on oxygen 24/7 although I don't know for what, she's never been very open about health problems. She does have some of the cutest cats though. Although only about 3 socialized with us during our visit, she has about 9 that are indoor/outdoor cats. It even snowed one of he nights were were there. We were a little worried we'd be stuck there due to snow on the 88, but we lucked out and traveled between all the storms.

On the way back to the Ranch, we did manage to stay one night in Nevada with my Dad's brother and Erik and I stay in a bed at my Cousin Jessica's awesome house. Her bed gave me inspiration to finally by a new bed.

When we made it back to Bishop, I got to see my Cousin Dylan play in his very first baseball game and we went out for Sushi afterwards.

We only had one snafu in the RV while Erik was driving. We were on the 24 heading to the 88 and we were banking around a turn with a guard rail with ends that stuck out a little too much.. sorry for the scratch Aunt Debbie. Thankfully, it wasn't worse.

My mom also ended up very sick the last day of our trip and two days after arriving home, she ended up in the hospital for 3 nights with a Kidney infection. She doesn't like that I harp on her soda drinking, but she drinks way too much and just doesn't want to hear it. I'm just glad she's getting better.

I myself ended up with some kind of food poisoning on Easter Sunday that lasted a little over a day. It was the first time I'd thrown up for being sick since I was 17. I'm not a fan of throwing up. I'll be posting photos of the trip on my FB and PhotoBucket http://photobucket.com/rickiella

3/18/2010 - SDCC Hotels go up for reservation

Today, the hotels for the San Diego Comic Convention (SDCC) went up for reservations at exactly 9am. Erik and a group of our friends all logged in and filled out their preferences. Since we have preview, Erik put in for Wednesday - Sunday night while all our friends only chose Thurs - Sun.

Hours go by... 2 of our friends are informed where they were placed. At none of the hotels on their list and too far from the convention center. One of the closest hotels to the convention center wasn't opening for SDCC reservations due to a 3-day Healthcare summit where Al Gore is planning on speaking. One of my friends managed to book a room there anyway. Erik booked one too, but we still hadn't heard from the reservations where we were placed. At 4:45pm, they finally sent Erik and email confirmation for the Hilton San Diego Bayfront which is also right next door. We decided to keep this reservation and drop the other once since we don't want to deal with the summit even though the Bayfront would be more expensive. We need a Wed - Sunday reservation due to preview night so we really trying to talk some of our friends into joining us. Right now most want to stick with the Hyatt, but we'd loose a Wednesday night if we joined them there. Thankfully, we don't have to set any of our plans in stone till May 18th when the deadline for full refund ends. Either way, since we're in a hotel right next door, I'm sure we'll talk others into joining us. This whole fiasco took up a significant chunk of my work thoughts today and didn't get as much done as I wanted. I'm so excited for this year's SDCC.. should be a blast! It is almost completely sold out. Only Sunday is left and Sunday isn't that great a day there.

At least, I got a 40 minute step-aerobic exercise even if I didn't make it to the gym.

Exercising

The last two months, I've been taking it easy with my exercising. Late in January, I started having more asthma attacks then I had been requiring me to use my expensive provental inhaler 1-3 times a day. I don't want to stop working out, but it so annoying. In February, I only worked out once a week. So far this month, I worked out twice the first week, once last week, and so far once this week, but I'm shooting for tomorrow so it will make 2. And what happened after today's workout which was 35 minutes on the elipitcal? Another bad asthma attack. I really hate my exercise induced asthma. I stay calm, but when you can't breath and only want to cough and these are you little baby coughs either. My doctor just tells me to take it slowly and it will improve. I wanted to get a change in prescription for the inhaler last time i was there but we got side tracked about pregnancy talk. Still no luck there, but we're hopeful. If nothing happens this month, I will start ovulation tracking on the fertility friend website my cousin Christina showed me.

I've been getting wired at night and not getting enough sleep. I'm going to try and get to be before midnight tonight. Wish me luck.

Thinking of getting back into Blogging

I've been wanting to get back into blogging but I'm just so lazy. I always find other things I want to do, but I really should update. It's a great way to journal and share with friends and family what is going on with me.

Just a quick update: Erik and I are trying to get pregnant. No news yet, but I'll keep you all updated :).

San Diego Comic Con 2009 - Preview Night Wed.

I remember doing a post about the one day Erik and I attended last year's Comic Con. This year we were able to attend from Preview Night all the way till Sunday afternoon when we were finally burnt out and left before the floor closed.

Our extravaganza began last Wednesday when we headed out to Santee. It took us longer to get out of our apartment than I thought it would be we made it there about 3:30. Then we realized the first trolley wasn't till 5:17. We were hungry so we stopped at a Carl's on the way to Quallcomm. The trolley got crowded by the time we reached the convention center, but that is the benefit of getting on a quallcomm, it's the first stop for the special Red Line so we always had a seat.

Preview Night was a lot more crowded than I thought it would be. We got our passes pretty darn quick and hit the floor. Our first stop was the NcSoft booth so we could get our special ingame code. I still can't believe I've been playing City of Heroes for 5 years. I don't play it as often now. I had been texting Jimmy and he and his girlfriend Aubrey found us at the NcSoft booth. I hadn't seen Jimmy for a couple of years. We met working the Ren Faire and he's growning up before my eyes. He's heading to his mid 20s and I've known him since he was 16. Erik and I also ran into our gaming friends Drew and Eric who we've been playing with for 4 years. After our hellos, Erik and I left them to go walk the floor. It took us 3 hours to walk from one side of the floor to the other. Too much to see and walking at a snail's pace. We visited some booths and I got my picture taken infront of the Stargate. There was a Twilight booth there which every time I saw it I said.. Comic Con Fail. Tomorrow, I'll post about Thursday. I'd type longer tonight, but my eyes are strained, it's hot and I want to go to bed :). I'm uploading photos to my photobucket right now, but I'm too tired to post them here, so I will get to that tomorrow. I have a feeling it will be a lot of pictures. But if you do want to look Comic Con Pictures

What a July!

I'm already subjectively forgetting many things that have occurred so far this month because so much has been happening.

4th of July weekend was great. Erik and I wanted to get out of our apartment and spend time with some family. I knew my parents weren't planning on anything so I contacted my cousin Christina and they planned to hit up the Del Mar Fair on Friday and the Wild Animal Park on Saturday. So we joined them. We left way to late on Friday and hit major traffic.. we finally decided to listen to our GPS and it took us on an adventure on side streets. It felt like it took us 3 hours to get to Del Mar and then parking was a pain, but we finally found parking, got into the fair and found the cousins. They had just finished riding rides in the kiddie area. We found food and I ended up eating a soft serve ice cream and chili fries.. I know healthy. We walked around a bit and looked at spas and people trying to sell us stuff. Eventually, the cousins left and Erik and I decided to walk around some more since it took us so long to get there. Erik decided to pick up some Shamwows which he wanted for some reason. We finally made it back to Aunt Debbie's where we actually got to sleep in one of the spare rooms for once and not one of the motor homes. We played some mad kerplunk that night.

We headed to the Wild Animal Park and Erik and I rode with Christina and Jim. On the way, we stopped at a place that sold ostrich eggs and Tanya's kids got one. Erik picked up some Habanero pistachios and then we headed to the park. Erik and I had never been so I didn't know what to expect, but it was. We mostly walked around and tried to see the animals. It was really hot. The kids made a cute hand print gift for Grandpa and later on the played in the water area. That night we drove up into the hills behind the house to watch the fireworks. It was fun trying to get up the hill. Aunt Debbie couldn't get it so Steve had to come drive it up for us. It was really dark and hard to find the right path. We got up there just in time. We decided to stay again that night. We went to Andy's for breakfast which was our 2nd time eating there that weekend. We headed home and were lazy for the rest of the day.

Last weekend, we had a little birthday gathering on Saturday with our friends in Huntington Beach. Good food and good company. We played Apples to Apples.

Sunday, I decided to have a Harry Potter marathon. I started the first movie at around 10:45am.. Talon and Tom showed up about 3/4 of the way through the 2nd movie and Ryan about 10 minutes after them.. They made it through 3 & 4 before heading home and Erik and I finished the last movie by 11pm. I'm finally watching The Half-Blood Prince tomorrow for my birthday.

Now the week work sucked. I was swamped in at my desk with folders and tons of smaller things to do. Tuesday UPS dropped off my curriculum order from 6/30.. about 7 boxes. It might not sound like much, but I have to catalogue the packets before I put them in the drawers. Then on Wednesday, UPS dropped off my order from 7/7.. two weeks of orders received back to back.. this time 9 boxes. At the same time, I'm trying to clean my desk of all my work since they won't have anyone covering for me next week. Then thursday comes and I was so tired, I decided not to bring a lunch which worked out because they had decided to surprise Pete and I with a birthday potluck. The only thing they forgot was Pete had it off LOL. This was the day everything decided to finally hit the fan in my company. Just before lunch, I was talking to the one CC I consider a friend about the new phone system since ours had already been switched out. We talked a little through email after lunch, but just random comments about over eating and I continued my day. During lunch, our counselor had received a text that she over reacted too and mention to my boss what it was about what was happening in Victorville. They would talk about it so we just continued on. As the day was coming to an end, my boss causally mention that some CCs had been laid off that afternoon and one of them had been the friend I had just spoken to a little over an hour before. We had no notice of any potential layoffs at all. I really hate that companies keep these kinds of things in the dark. We had a big meeting about it yesterday and they're changing a lot of titles and many people are taking pay cuts. They initiated hiring and salary freezes. In our corporate level 27 positions were cut, but they just won't tell you who. The biggest reason is because the state won't pass their budget and we don't know when we're going to get money from them. It drives me nuts the secretive way they go about it. I hate having to find out the gossiping way. It would be nice to know who I can't contact anymore. This all happened while I'm getting ready for my first full week vacation actually using PTO instead of relying on holidays. I stayed late on Thursday and went back to the office yesterday afternoon even though I didn't have to. For sanity purposes, I did not want work to come back to that needed done. I wanted it all done. I succeeded and was home by 5:30. My friend and I talked about what happened and she's doing ok. I'm not going to loose touch with her even if she no longer works with me :(. She was my meeting buddy.

Last night and today has been lazy. Erik and I watched a classic pirate movie of The Black Swan with Tyrone Power. It's a lot of fun. I'll probably own it on DVD someday.

I've spent today cleaning, watching movies, and playing on facebook. I still want to do a photo blog, but if you're interested in seeing photos check out my photobucket: